Graphic Design Category

The RockPop Gallery blog has just posted an interview with artist/illustrator John Lorenzi about the making of the cover for Megadeth's 2007 album United Abominations. It is an excellent account of how the Lorenzi came to create the cover and the creative process involved.

Founded by Mike Goldstein, the Portland, Oregon-based RockPop Gallery showcases the best artistic and photographic talent from all areas of today's music industry. Their ongoing series of interviews are intended to give ;the music and art fan, an inside look at the making of the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the industry's most-recognized and influential images.

Posted by: dingers

UnCovered Interview - United Abominations album cover by John Lorenzi

UnCovered Interview - John Lorenzi and the making of the cover for Megadeth's United Abominations album

Subject - the making of the cover of the Megadeth album titled United Abominations, released in 2007 on RoadRunner Records.

As it is true in most of the careers of "creative types" - the folks that rely on whatever it is inside them that makes them want to devote themselves to making things (art, music, literature, etc.) that somehow stimulate others - sometimes, you just need a break to be discovered and for your career to get some sort of a boost. Not that that break will necessarily lead to fame, riches and the adoration of the masses...sometimes, it just serves to introduce you to a patron or two and helps kick-start your fan base to some degree. From there, it usually just takes a tireless work ethic, marketing savvy and gobs of luck before you can have a life-long career doing what you're passionate about.

Megadeth's Dave Mustaine has long shown a flair for invention, both in his music and how his musical efforts are promoted visually. In a song ("Skull Beneath The Skin") from their first record release in 1985, Mustaine describes a character - a macabre manifestation of "See/Hear/Speak No Evil" - who he then realized in an initial sketch he did (and then worked with a series of artists over the years to recreate to fit applications including album cover art, merchandise, music video/stage props, etc.). And, like other examples of iconic rock images done before and since, each artist's interpretation of Mr. Rattlehead would reflect - some more successfully than others (according to fans/critics) - the status of both the band's music, internal politics and the state of the world in which Vic "lived". In some cases, it seems clear that even a guy with all of his facial orifices sealed shut just can't get a break.  

In the case highlighted here though - that of artist/illustrator John Lorenzi - his own break came as the result of an almost-first-place (!!) finish in a contest to redesign an iconic image - that of Vic Rattlehead - where he just hoped to gain a little notice and, perhaps, win a guitar for his kid...

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Famous Album Covers is a fun collaborative blog that I have been contributing to for many months. It features fictional album covers by fictional bands and often fictional stories about them.

My latest creation uses an acid-washed stencil font like those that have been popping up on a lot of recent album covers, particularly the various ICON greatest hits collections (right).

I also wanted to follow the trend of using scans of old family snapshots and amateur photos as album art. So, I used a scan of a my late mother in a photo booth with a friend that was taken in the 1950s. Mom was the blonde on the right. I imagined that it was the kind of photo girls would send to their boyfriends who were away at war.

I like making up stories that are almost believable and based on real artists. You'll have to guess who inspired the fictional artist Ellen Townsend. You can click the image for a larger view.

Ellen Townsend: Missing You

Ellen Townsend (born August 16, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Townsend was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. A musical prodigy, she learned to play guitar by the age of 10. Her formative years were spent in the small town of Clarinda, Iowa, where she began performing in a bar owned by her stepfather. Her first public concert was at age 15 at the University of Iowa campus. Townsend cites Joni Mitchell as a primary influence on her music, and her initial recordings reflect that.

Townsend began working in the music scene professionally in the late 1970s. She moved to New York City in 1983, where she became involved with the Fast Folk cooperative in Greenwich Village. She has recorded 10 studio albums.

Released in August 2010, her most recent album, Missing You, is being called the best of her career by many top music critics. The title track was used for the theme of the TV series Deadly Little Bitches and has reached #4 on the pop music chart.

Famous Album Covers accepts submissions. If you're inspired to create a fictional album cover and a short story to go along with it, feel free to drop them a message.

Last week, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert was publicly ridiculed for using the Comic Sans font in an angry letter to player LeBron James. The letter was posted on the team's website after James announced that he is leaving the team. Gilbert's ridiculous font choice was instantly a trending topic on Twitter and become a hot topic on blogs across the Internet.

It has been quite a long time since I have seen Comic Sans used on an album cover. However, I often see other fonts that have become cliche from overuse or have been reviled by graphic designers for their lack of artistic merit. There are just some fonts that should not be used unless it is intended to be ironic. The recent cover for the album Brothers by The Black Keys (above right) is an excellent example of an ironic cover. It uses a version of the overly common font Cooper Black for a generic look.

Recently, I saw that the font Copperplate Gothic was used for the cover of David Archuleta's forthcoming single, Something 'Bout Love (below). Copperplate Gothic is certainly not as despised as Comic Sans. However, it is a font that has been used for countless rock and heavy metal album covers. It has a kind of horror movie look to it, especially when modified to include crosses and other symbols. It definitely doesn't work on a David Archuleta cover.

Perhaps the art director who approved Copperplate Gothic for Archuleta's cover should have gone the ironic route instead and used Comic Sans and Cooper Black. At least that would have been cute and creative.

In 1962, legendary pop artist Andy Warhol caused quite a stir in the art world with Campbell's Soup Cans, thirty-two canvases each featuring a painting of a Campbell's Soup can (right). Each painting represents a diffferent variety of Campbell's Soup.

I saw Campbell's Soup Cans in the 1980s at an Andy Warhol exhibit in Los Angeles. Like most of Warhol's work, the scale was surprising. The canvases take up a huge amount of wall space. It can be seen on permanent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The paintings at MoMa are arranged in the order they were introduced to the public by Campbell's.

Campbell's Soup Cans was one of the first major pieces that uses a branded product label as fine art. It led to an entire series of Campbell's Soup can paintings by Warhol. There have been dozens of parodies and tributes of the work over the past 48 years.

I do not know how many album covers have been based on Campbell's Soup Cans. Two recent exampes is Soup by The Beautiful South and The Housemartins and Dog Food by Mondo Generator.

A version of the collaboration by The Beautiful South and The Housemartins actually came in a soup can. I have seen an alternate cover that looked more like a copy of the Warhol painting. I assume it was changed due to copyright issues.

The Mondo Generator cover more closely resembles the Warhol original. I think it stands up better as a parody of Warhol rather than an imitation.

The Beautiful South and The Housemartins - Soup (2008)

Mondo Generator - Dog Food (2010)

Posted by: zeefritz

When I first saw the album cover for the forthcoming Christina Aguilera album, Bionic (right), I took an instant dislike to it. Now that I have seen the original photograph on which the cover is based, I hate it even more.

So, I opened the photo up in Photoshop and started messing around with it to see if I could come up with an album cover that conveys the "bionic" theme without making Aguilera look like a robot zombie that has had half of its face removed. The Rocky Horror mouth that the artist pasted on her doesn't even resemble Aguilera's.

I also dislike the horror movie blood streams that have been applied to the typography. The typography is also very weak and not proportioned well on the image.

I decided to apply some futuristic tattoos to Aguilera's face. I wanted the effect to be subtle, yet convey the idea that she is perhaps part machine. I think that the result is a nice start. The tattoos need quite a bit more detail and 3D effects, but I think this is a major improvement.

I think what I would like to end up with is something that is similar to what H.R. Giger did for Debbie Harry (right), just not as morbid and creepy. I haven't found just the right font yet either. I think a custom font would be nice for a major artist like Aguilera. (I'll be updating the image as I work on it.)

I'm known for being somewhat of a "font geek" in my circle of very geeky friends. I am usually the one people call when they need to identify a certain font on an album cover. Often, I am able to help. In other cases, I can't. That's because many fonts used on album covers are custom fonts that have been created especially for the artist. It may be similar to an existing font. It could also be unique.

However, there are many recording artists that use a common font. I have listed a few of them below, along with the name of the font.

Weezer - Century Gothic

Oasis - Arial Black Italic

Glee - Avant Garde Medium

Yazoo - Broadway

Coldplay - Albertus MT

The Clash - Stencil

Do you have a favorite album cover font? If so, let me know about it by leaving a comment. I may share in an upcoming article.

 

• http://www.amazon.com/Mischievous-Art-Jim-Flora/dp/1560976004/

Here is a short clip of street artist Mr. Brainwash discussing the album covers that he created for Madonna’s recent retrospective collection Celebration. I wrote previously that the cover for the standard version of the album fails due to the cliché Andy Warhol-style blue eyeshadow and red lipstick that the artist applied to her face.

Mr. Brainwash also says that he feels his album cover is better than the 1962 Andy Warhol portrait (right) that inspired it. Obviously, Mr. Brainwash doesn’t understand that Warhol applied the garrish makeup and yellow color to Marilyn’s face as a form of social commentary. It was an insult to her beautiful face to cover it with harsh colors, masking the real person beneath the artificial image.

After Monroe’s suicide in August 1962, Warhol used a 1953 publicity shot of the actress by photographer Gene Korman to create his silkscreen portrait of her. It was a shocking image at the time. No one had ever seen the face of Marilyn Monroe reduced to pop art in this way. Warhol’s portrait was timely and extremely morbid.

For Mr. Brainwash to copy this important work of art and claim that his imitation is better than the original is ridiculous. It shows a lack of understandering of the artist he is imitating. Perhaps if he’d created his album cover shortly after Madonna’s death it would have a similar impact and an irony worth consideration. However, it would still be an imitation of Andy Warhol.

The nominees for the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards were announced yesterday. The three categories that are of most interest to album art aficionados are those for Best Recording Package, Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package, and Album of the Year.

Here are the nominees for Best Recording Package and Album of the Year for recordings released during the eligibility year October 1, 2008 through August 31, 2009:

Best Recording Package

Spinal Tap - Back From The Dead
Brian Porizek, Art Director

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Stefan Sagmeister, Art Director

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Neko Case & Judge, Art Directors

Splitting Adam - Splitting Adam
Jeff Harrison, Art Director

Various Artists - Tathagata
Szu Wei Cheng & Hui Chen Huang, Art Directors

The Spinal Tap CD packaging features an “action figure stage show” that can be assembled from an insert in the jewel case. I wrote about it a few months ago. I am not surprised it was nominated. The David Byrne and Brian Eno CD also has a very cool design. From photos that I have seen, the Tathagata CD features what appears to be handmade paper.

My favorite for the win in this category is Splitting Adam’s self titled album. It features an amazing 3D hologram as demonstrated in the video below.

Album of the Year

Beyoncé - I Am… Sasha Fierce

The Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D.

Lady Gaga - The Fame

Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey And The Groogrux King

Taylor Swift - Fearless

Of course, album art won’t be a consideration in selection of the Album of the Year. However, the winner and the nominees will influence the design of album covers for years to come. Art directors tend to look at successful and critically acclaimed albums for inspiration. I really do not have a favorite among the nominated albums as far as album art goes. They are all fairly average.

Taschen Books has recently published Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover, an amazing 422-page collectors’ volume that illustrates the career of the graphic designer who is credited for the invention of the album cover.

I recently read through the entire book online and it is wonderfully done. It has brilliant full-color images of Steinweiss work, including typography, logo design, album covers, movie posters and more. Steinweiss’ career spanned over three decades and the book gives us an excellent look at how his work remained distinctive and influential throughout the years.

Authors Steven Heller and Kevin Reagan have created a book the will be of interest to both graphic design professionals and anyone interested in learning about the early history of the album cover and graphic design in American advertising.

The signed limited edition is limited to 1,500 copies comes in a slipcase. At $500, the limited edition is priced out of reach for most of us. Hopefully, it will be made available to the masses as a standard edition in the near future.

One of my favorite covers of 2009 is for Susan Boyle’s forthcoming album I Dreamed A Dream (right). The album will be released on Monday and it has broken all online presales records.

Fans were delighted when the cover was revealed several weeks ago. There had been speculation that the image for the cover would be a Scotland landscape, similar to the image that was used in the artist’s official website.

Instead, the album features a beautiful black and white portrait of Boyle. Her head is cradled in her hands and she has a sparkling and almost mischievous expression on her face.

I recently came across the color version of the portrait used on the album cover and decided to see what the album cover would have looked like in color rather than black and white. I really like the result. I’ve posted my creation below as a mock up for a deluxe edition of I Dreamed A Dream. I hope that if a deluxe version of the album is released that the record label will consider doing something like this.

I believe this image is just as beautiful in color. The photograph was originally taken by Hugh Stewart for the September 2009 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. This is an excellent example of why using a talented photographer is an important part of album cover design.   

When I read Adam Lambert recent tweet that defends his new album cover as “campy”, I immediately thought of the most recent album cover that I have seen that displays a true sense of gay camp. The cover for the deluxe edtion of Rufus Wainwright’s Millwaukee At Last shows the artist in a bathrobe and putting on a huge diamond earring. Wainwright is also wearing a bit of eyeliner.

The album uses a retro font that adds to the campiness. The concept is simple. The photograph shows Wainwright’s personality and sense of humor. The image of a vain diva playing at a venue in the American Midwest is a joke that anyone can get in an instant.

Recently, photographer Matthew Rolston took a wonderful campy photograph of Adam Lambert for Rolling Stone. Lambert even uses this image as the background of his Twitter homepage. I took that image and applied fonts that are similar to those used on the Rufus Wainwright album. I think the result is an album cover that has much more impact and suits Lambert’s image.

Now, THIS is a campy album cover. I think it works because it is based on the work of a talented photographer and is not overworked. The background is not busy and distracting. It also works with the title of the album. “For Your Entertainment” envokes an image of an artist performing live on stage.

My advice to Adam Lambert is to seek out a talented photographer and art director for your next album cover. Do not try to come up with a cover that screams at the viewer. Your voice already does that.

After I wrote a review of Allison Iraheta’s new album cover (right) this morning, I started thinking about what makes the difference between an average cover that is simply designed to sell the album and those memorable album covers that make a lasting impact. The cover for Iraheta’s Just Like You doesn’t really say much. It features an attractive portrait of the artist, but it doesn’t tell us anything interesting about her — other than the fact that she has brightly colored hair.

If you’re a fan of American Idol, you watched Allison grow as a performer during the competion. She matured from a timid young girl who had difficulty speaking her mind into a confident star. Why isn’t that story conveyed by her album cover?

Below is a mock up of a concept that I came up with for Iraheta’s album cover. It shows her standing in what could be a backyard or neighborhood playground anywhere in the world. Standing in front of a tire swing is a small girl with a frightened look on her face. This child is “just like you” or just like anyone who has ever been small enough to be afraid to jump in that swing and head for the sky.

A talented photographer could do much to improve a concept like this. It would result in a cover for a debut album that Iraheta could be proud of for the rest of her career. I think this kind of image would be inspirational to Iraheta’s young fans who view her as a peer who has already achieved fame and success.

This concept shows a contrast between the edgy pop star that Iraheta has become and the child that she used to be. It is something that will contrbute to her image and be valued by fans years from today. There are dozens of album covers that portray female artists as sexy vixens. There are very few that are smart and sexy at the same time.

It took me about an hour to come up with a concept for this album cover. That demonstrates the small amount of effort that must have gone into creating the final cover for Just Like You. The record label just slapped something together without considering the artist’s image or her future. That is very typical and should serve as a lesson to young artists who are just starting out in the business. Ask for concepts that you can live with for the rest of your career. Your album art will help define you.

Here is an interesting video about the creation of the cover for Snoop Dogg’s forthcoming album Malice N Wonderland by Estevan Oriel and Mister Cartoon.

Apparently, recycling old album art has become a trend. A few weeks ago, I ran across an album cover that featured a collage that was basically a Madonna album cover with first aid tape applied to it. This second example is a bit more sophisicated.

The cover of the upcoming album from Indie rock band Smith Westerns features a collage by artist Jason Matthew Lee. The collage uses a very popular album as the background. I am not sure if the other images are album covers. They could very well be.

This album will be released on July 7 and has not yet been added to the AAX gallery. I listened to a few sample tracks on the band’s MySpace page. They sound okay, but I don’t think I’ll buy even a single track to add the 600 x 600 art to the gallery. Check them out if you get a chance. If you get the album art, please upload it. It is notable for the reuse of a an iconic cover.

If you’re in any way interested in creative CD packaging design, you must watch this video that demonstrates the “action figure stage show” that is included with the new Spinal Tap album, Back From The Dead.

American Rock band The Used released the cover for their upcoming album Artwork today with the following announcement on their website.

Artwork For Artwork

Want to see the cover for the new album? Head over to  http://theused.buzznet.com/ to check it out now!

Get it? The album is called Artwork and they are releasing the artwork for the album. That is so clever (yes, I’m being sarcastic). Personally, I think the cover is pretty darn hidious. I don’t mean the subject matter, either. The artwork for Artwork is over saturated and looks like someone rubbed it down with a sheet of sandpaper. It is very poorly executed. I will let the social critics comment about the drug-related image (although I am squeemish about needles).

Anyone who has restored an old photo or a painting can tell you that it is almost impossible to recreate the original. You can come close, but it will never be perfect. Then, there are some who are more interested in improving the original and perhaps updating it.

Those are the issues I faced when I decided to restore the cover of an old Divine record that i found online. I want to frame it and display it in my home. So, I had to decide whether or not I wanted it to look more like the original or make changes that would make it look better hanging on a wall.

Here’s what I came up with (you can click the image for a larger view). I pumped up the contast, applied Photoshop lighting effects and made the colors much more dramatic than the original.

I’m old enough to have actually seen Divine perform live. I wanted to make the image jump out and be noticed from across the room — just like Divine on stage.

One thing that I had trouble making my mind up about was whether or not to remove that huge pimple on Divine’s arm. I thought that it was best to leave it there. I think Divine would have wanted it that way.

Shepard Fairy, the urban poster artist best known for his iconic Obama “Hope” poster, has designed the cover for the upcoming Love and Rocket tribute album, New Tales To Tell.

Due out next month, the album features artists such as Black Francis, The Flaming Lips, The Dandy Warhols, and Better Than Ezra. You can check out samples on the album’s MySpace page:

I have wanted to write about the cover of Animal Collective’s 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion since I first saw it back in February. It is an amazing work of art and science.

The image was created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a professor at the Department of Psychology of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. Kitaoka is known for his visual illusions, the most notable of which is his Rotating Snakes. Note that the image below is not an animated GIF. The motion that you see is strictly an illusion.

There are many of these kinds of fascinating visual illusions on Kitaoka’s website: http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html. The site also includes detailed explanations of how the illusions work and how they were created.

The layout and design of the Merriweather Post Pavilion album was dome by Rob Carmichael of SEEN design. Carmichael also designed Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam album cover.

The only album covers that I know of that are even similar to Merriweather Post Pavilion are two covers created for Soulwax by designer Trevor Jackson. 

  

Of course, there have been covers that used designs by M.C. Esher and similar optical illusions. I am reluctant to put those covers in the same category. If you know of any album covers that use visual illusions similar to Kitaoka’s, please leave a comment.

I often describe myself as a font geek. I have literally thousands of them. Some of my favorites are retro fonts from a foundry called Font Diner. You’ve probably seen their fonts used in advertisements and on product labels. Font Diner fonts have also been used by the designers of album covers. Here are a few examples:

This album cover uses a font called Chowderhead from Font Diner’s County Fair Picnic font set. This font is one of my favorites from the Font Diner collection. Check out some of the others in the set.

This album cover features Al’s Motor Inn from Font Diner’s In-Flight Meal font set. I have seen this particular font used several times on other album covers.

The font used on the album cover is called Leisure Script. It is part of Font Diner’s Casino Buffet font set. It is a nice script with a cool retro look.